'Bones' Season 11, Episode 19 Review: The Head In The Abutment

Tweet This

Emily Deschanel in the “The Head in the Abutment” episode of BONES on FOX. (Credit: Patrick McElhenney/FOX)

While Booth and Brennan are tackling some spring cleaning, Hodgins and Wells are smack-talking while playing video games. A floater found in the Anacostia River brings them all back to work.

Based on the diameter of the femoral heads and the auricular surfaces of the ilia, Brennan estimates the victim was a white male in his 30s. There are numerous fractures on the clavicles, ribs, anterior tibial crest, calcanei, tali, metatarsals, and phalanges. Saroyan finds in the flesh evidence of dislocated shoulders, hips, knees, and groin and abdominal tears. Hodgins notes predation by the Eastern snapping turtle. The lack of intestinal bloating and degree of skin slippage means the victim has been in the river for only 12-15 hours.

The body is missing a head, but decapitation was post-mortem, a violent cut with tremendous force. While the forensic staff discuss possibilities for the injury, Angela searches social media. She finds a viral video of two guys in a boat who found the body -- and their propeller is shown popping off the head, which floats away.

Although there are extensive antemortem injuries the victim sustained over the last seven years, ID is hard to pin down. Angela says the demographics match about 29,000 people. Saroyan finds no drugs or alcohol in the victim's system. They try to cross-reference the injuries to a hospital but aren't successful. While Brennan is describing the injuries and approximate dates they were sustained to Booth, he realizes they may have the body of Seth Lang, a famous hockey player.

Booth and Brennan go to talk to Katy Stover, the widow of the team owner. She notes that Lang's death has been overwhelming and suggests they go talk to the head coach. The coach suggests they talk to Drew Poppleton, who was Lang's enforcer. Aubrey brings Poppleton in for questioning, suggesting that Poppleton may have been upset that he was losing his job. But he notes that there are plenty of other teams who would want an enforcer.

Saroyan finds fluid in Lang's lungs, suggesting that drowning was the manner of death, and Brennan finds bilateral perimortem fractures of the carpals, which means Lang fought back. Hodgins wants to find the head and convinces Saroyan to fund his purchase of two military-class drones equipped with a grasping mechanism -- he's gamifying the recovery of the head with a fancy, remote-control claw machine.

Based on Angela's computer forensics, Booth seeks out Darryl Patterson, the team's equipment manager who visited Lang's house a few times recently. Darryl admits to this, but notes that he was installing an infinity rink at Lang's house. But since swab results from the carpals reveal traces of blue paint and rust, the more likely place that Lang was killed was the training complex. Angela also looks through Lang's finances and finds out that he frequented a hockey bar. She checks social media tags and finds that Alex Conrad was photographed mid-yelling-match with Lang. Aubrey questions Lang, who is four months pregnant. He asks her to tell him who the father is, but she's smart and notes he doesn't have a warrant, so she doesn't have to disclose that.

Brennan meanwhile finds multiple curved fractures on the ulnae, made with a thin, curved weapon. Hodgins finds evidence of stainless steel in the fractures, which could relate to the cold tub at the training facility. Lang may have been flailing while being drowned in the tub. Booth immediately thinks of Darryl, who is in charge of locking up the complex. He's been selling Lang's stuff online to make money. But Darryl says Lang was complicit in that, helping him out because Katy Strober cut all staff salaries.

Angela and Booth find that Katy was making shrewd business decisions. She was purposefully tanking the team so that she could legally move it to a bigger and better market, making hundreds of millions in the process. Katy says she'd never kill anyone, even to tank the team. She suggests they talk to Alex again, since Lang was trying to clean up the sport and Alex was dealing pain killers, HGH, and other illegal drugs to the players. Lang was planning to confront Alex over this.

The head is defleshed, and the Jeffersonian team finds a fractured mandible and missing central mandibular incisors, both of which are old hockey injuries. Sharp force trauma to the inferior aspect of cervical vertebra 6 is the result of the intersection with the power boat propeller. Contusions to the occipital and parietal are the result of banging against the abutment. But the comminuted fracture on the occipital around the time of death likely knocked Lang unconscious, making it easier to drown him in the cold tub.

So, whodunit? Alex laywers up but also says she didn't kill Lang, who left after they fought at the bar. The curved aspect of the skull fracture plus the trace evidence suggests a very specific hockey stick injured Lang. And since hockey sticks are specific to players, Booth and Aubrey call in Drew Poppleton again. He was paying Alex's OBGYN bills, as he was the father of her child. Lang was threatening to turn Alex in for dealing drugs, though, and Poppleton asked Lang to look the other way for him, just this once. When Lang didn't, even though Poppleton protected him as his enforcer for years, Poppleton got mad and killed him in an attempt to prevent Alex from going to jail.

Anthropological Comments

Demographics: While femoral head diameter is an OK proxy for sex, and auricular surface degradation does indicate age-at-death, Brennan appears to have simply guessed at ancestry.

Honestly, the forensics were really good this week. All the injuries seem to line up (even if, as usual, the trace evidence is a little convenient, especially with a submerged body) on the bones. The ID wasn't super easy, since Angela didn't have a head and her magical ability to do facial recognition. Even the layout of the skeleton in the lab looked like it was in standard anatomical position (more or less).

Plot Comments

Wells and Hodgins smack-talk each other in very scientific ways. Wells: “Your face is so big that it creates non-Euclidian triangles with over 180 degrees around them.” Hodgins: “Your face is so expansive that the lensing effect is such that light passing within one astronomical unit has a radius approach of 16 to the 9th meter.”

I'm still weirded out that Hodgins calls Saroyan "Cam" but she calls him "Dr. Hodgins." Anyone else?

Brennan, on diamonds: "well-marketed minerals masquerading as good investments."

Aubrey mentions that Darryl has held a grudge for 20 years -- but of course, he and Booth were in high school 30 years ago.

While drones are super cool, I assume they were working with the FBI, FAA, and others to get permission to do so. After all, there are numerous regulations now in place that prohibit people from flying drones within several miles of airports -- which is pretty much most of D.C. So if the FBI and FAA knew about the remote control drones, why did they allow them to fly back with a decapitated head, rather than having someone on shore to do the recovery?

In addition, doesn't flying the head all over the city compromise the evidence by, you know, letting stuff fall off? By picking up bugs and such? Just, no.

Besides all that, flying the head through the city and then taking a freaking victory lap with human remains in the Jeffersonian is -- ew, just so entirely, unreasonably unethical that I'm grossed out by it, even though it's fictitious.

Rating

The forensics and the plot in this episode were both top-notch. The episode moved along and was interesting. While this would normally earn an A because of that, the gross misstep with Hodgins and the human remains parade means I can only give The Head in the Abutment an A- .